Field
This invention relates to food temperature mimicry systems in the food storage and transportation industry. More particularly, it relates to a portable food emulator, suited for replicating a specific food product's temperature behavior.
Background
With increased health and liability concerns in the food services industry with respect to tainted or spoiled foods, and reductions in shelf life and quality, restaurants, grocery stores and food transporters have looked to sophisticated systems to monitor and control food products that are in cold storage. Typically, such systems involve tracking the temperature of the ambient air in the cold storage unit and sending an alarm if the temperature rises above an acceptable level. However, this approach does not accurately reflect the actual temperature inside the food product, the real medium that is of concern. In some companies, persons have been tasked to manually probe the product temperature (opening, probing, resealing), the performance of which, unfortunately, is known to be often falsified. Accordingly, erring on the side of caution, the food industry unnecessarily discards millions of dollars of suspect but un-spoiled food a year, putting a “tax” on the profitability of operations. Or, the food industry over-chills the products (thereby, spending millions on energy costs) to avoid concerns of spoilage.
Therefore, several attempts have been made in the industry to try to replicate a food proxy system for temperature monitoring, but the prior art all require certain compromises in transportability, durability and ease of operation, not to mention accuracy, expense of maintenance, etc. Accordingly, there has been a long-standing need in the food services industry for more effective solutions to these and other challenges in industry.
As detailed below, various system(s) and method(s) are presented that address the above concerns, thereby allowing more efficient monitoring of chilled or frozen food products' temperatures to provide significant energy and cost savings in the food industry.